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How We Learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6150 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 32 15 October 2014 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Just finished reading “How We Learn” by Benedict Carey. This covers the latest science on learning, with some emphasis on language learning. It’s quite a short read, and some of the points I’ve read previously, but there were still a few nuggets I hadn’t encountered before. Here’s a quick summary of some of the points,
- To learn something off by heart, you should spend 30% of the time reviewing, and 70% of the time testing yourself. If you test yourself before the reviewing, you’ll prime your brain to be more focused on the materials. The book details a number of case studies and examples. - Spaced repetition. He mentions SRS, flash cards, and a short history on Anki. The bit I found interesting was how little reviewing is needed. You learn it off by heart on day 1, review a week later, and then a month or two later. Does SRS software work this way ? - Quiet place isn’t needed. He says a distracting and varied environment works better than a solitary quiet location. The more we vary our study routine the more we will anchor the material on a long term basis. He says not having a study routine is better than having one. Varying the study location is better than studying in the same location. The well-known point about multiple sessions versus long sessions is covered here. - Fluency illusion. This isn’t about language fluency, but the study deception that occurs when we think we’ve learnt material fully when we haven’t. - Interweaving. The studies say that it is better to interweave different aspects of a skill, over focusing on one element. The books veers away to cover visual learning at this point, and perceptual learning. The points would apply to learning Kanji and other character rich languages. - Sleep plays a crucial role in learning, and the different sleep cycles seem to affect which skills we acquire. It seems are brains figure out patterns that we struggle to identify consciously. This section is interesting and it might explain some of the bow wave effect. Edited by DaraghM on 15 October 2014 at 4:17pm 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 32 15 October 2014 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting! I might have to get that book. Regarding SRS schedule, I think the
default settings are 1, 3, 5 days spacing, so it's more tightly spaced than in the book, but you can set it yourself. I've found that most words are easily pushed through the first few repetitions and then get harder once they're up at about a week or two of spacing. Maybe I should tweak that setting. It varies a lot, though. Some words are really hard, others really easy. Depends on how familiar you are with the sound system, how easily you can make up a simple mnemonic, how similar the word is to other words you're learning at the same time (interference) etc. I really like the tip about varying the study environment and not having a study schedule. It goes against a lot of advice I've heard previously, but it makes sense to me in my own experience. I'm a sucker for routines, unfortunately, but my routine is very varied over the day and I study at home, on the bus, on the subway and on little snippets of SRS reps over the course of the day. Sleep is also a great point. Does he mention the effectiveness of studying in the morning compared to the evening? I believe sleeping shortly after studying improves retention, and if you're studying in the morning, it's a good idea to have an afternoon nap if you can. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 32 15 October 2014 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
That's interesting since recently I've been thinking that doing some sort of testing (like Anki cloze cards or just old-fashioned textbook exercises and drills) is helpful for activating skills, as a complement to reviewing language over and over through input. I'd be interested to see the ideas and examples of self-testing, so I suppose I'd better read the book! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 32 15 October 2014 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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SRS is basically testing, coupled with instant feedback. By thinking hard and trying to
come up with the answer before revealing it, you're priming your brain and increasing the stickiness of the word. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 32 15 October 2014 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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A number of years ago when I was in school, we had the perception that people who master multiple languages had
special talents. Now it seemed it is more a personal effort than anything else. Back then we would go to class 9 months of the year and take 3 months off for our summer holidays. We would go to camp, enrol in music lessons, etc. to spend the time. The other day I was listening to a local Chinese radio station on a story about Malala Yousafzai from N. Pakistan who recently won a Nobel Peace Price. It is a story that has been on the media for the past week. The only exception was that the broadcast wass not in English. In the beginning we tend to set artificial goals such as X percent spend on acquiring new vocabularies, Y percent on grammar, etc. Once you get to a certain level, you would be listening to the radio, reading newspapers in another language. When you come across words & phrases you don't know you'd look them up. You don't really think of watching TV in another language as learning, you simply build various activities into a regular routine. People like myself who get into playing music on a piano keyboard would spend hours at a time learning a few pieces. Reviewing and testing yourself is important. However, once you get into learning as a hobby, you don't feel that you are pushing yourself to play piano or read a book in another language like an academic exercise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lemberg1963 Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4238 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Ukrainian* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish | Message 6 of 32 15 October 2014 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Carey discusses how topics are consolidated during the sleep cycle. The author's suggestion is to review fact based subjects (language, history) in the morning, concept based subjects (math) in the evening. Edited by Lemberg1963 on 15 October 2014 at 4:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 32 15 October 2014 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pretty similar to what I've learned from "Learning how to learn" on Coursera. Barbara Oakley was the main instructor and the course is expanded upon in her "Mind for Numbers" book. (the title is misleading; the coursera class wasn't focused on learning maths/science)
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 32 15 October 2014 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
That's interesting. Fits well with my tendency to do SRS in the morning and during the day, and doing shadowing and massive input (i.e. TV watching) in the evening. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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